Police officers have had no impact on levels of reported crime, Home Office researchers have found.

The uniformed patrols, which have wide ranging powers of arrest, thousands of fast cars, multimillion pounds worth of computers and more technology than you can shake a stick at, was launched nearly 200 years ago by the government to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour.

The Home Office study found PCs had no “measurable impact” on recorded crime. And the department said they weren’t even a “reassuring presence” in the community because they are hardly ever seen in the community.

The Police Officers, introduced by former Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, wear a uniform with a chequered trim to distinguish them from PCSOs. Many of the incidents dealt with by PCs were not categorised as crimes, such as telling people to stop calling each other names, calming people who have been sworn at and sorting out the lives of millions of people who can’t be arsed to sort out their own lives. They spend the majority of their time in offices doing paperwork or on spcialist squads, rarely patrolling the streets on foot (or even in cars).

A Home Office spokeswoman said the evaluation of the country’s 140,000 police officers was largely ambivalent.

* actually the original article was a BBC report about PCSOs which I think has certain paralells. You can read it at the BBC News Wesbite